


something so wholesome about you

by menecio



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Budding Love, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 16:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16411838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menecio/pseuds/menecio
Summary: Cosmos and Beachcomber spend a quiet moment together drinking fuel.





	something so wholesome about you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CalamityCons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityCons/gifts).



> Friendo finished the lettering for the [latest page](https://tfa-followthelight.tumblr.com/post/179132142926/) of her [TFA fancomic](https://tfa-followthelight.tumblr.com/tagged/Transformers-Animated/chrono), so I wrote this prompt she gave me as a reward for all her hard work! Title is from the song [From Eden by Hozier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmWbBUxSNUU).

Cosmos has a small hab-suite in Iacon, a single room with a decent view of the Metroplex. He wouldn’t spend much time there in the past, preferring to hang around the astronomy labs even when his name wasn’t in the roster for that solar cycle, but as of late he’s had a reason to get back home after his work shift is done.

Said reason is currently lounging on the floor of Cosmos’s hab-suite, one leg up on Cosmos’s recharge slab and completely oblivious to the fact that Cosmos just entered the room. If sprawling unselfconsciously were an art, Beachcomber would be the leader of the artistic movement.

After a moment of deliberation, Cosmos smiles and says, “Hi.”

It takes a moment, but upon hearing cosmos, Beachcomber looks away from the ceiling to stare at him for yet another long moment. Then his visor glows slightly brighter when his processor finally interprets the information his visual system is sending it.

“Hey,” Beachcomber drawls.

Cosmos’s small smile grows a little. He walks up to the table in the corner and puts down the high-octane fuel he purchased on his way back from work. Not what he usually drinks, but he knows Beachcomber likes fuels that carry a bit of a punch.

“How’s stuff?” Beachcomber asks.

“Oh, good, good,” Cosmos says. He fiddles with the cans for a moment, then adds, “Great, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm, yes.” Cosmos pauses, torn between wanting to share and not wanting to ramble. But Beachcomber likes listening, or at least Cosmos thinks he does, so he launches into an abridged explanation, “We discovered four giant exoplanets around a young star today. Remember the star I mentioned the other day? 39-20121-182119? That one. At only two million years old, it’s already at the center of its very own system!

“We discovered its protoplanetary disk a few days ago,” he continues now, unable to stop when he’s already begun, “and have been observing it for celestial bodies since. We thought that maybe we’d see a young system in the making, but it turns out the system’s all done! It’s already stable—well, as stable as a system with four gas giant exoplanets can be. It’s so interesting!”

“Groovy,” Beachcomber says. “The lil’ buddy has lil’ buddies.”

“I wouldn’t call them little, I don’t think,” Cosmos giggles, “but they’re very young, yes!”

“Young buddies,” Beachcomber acquiesces easily. He lets the leg he has on the recharge slab drop to the floor. Then he rolls onto his ventral plating, his arms crossed under his chin and a mellow smile on his face. “Whatcha got there?”

“Oh, um, this?” Cosmos fiddles with a can again. “It’s—well, I thought you’d like it. Some high-octane fuel. And some, um, powdered alloy.” He shows Beachcomber the small packet. “The shopkeeper told me it’s a must if you’re having high-octane fuel.”

“Groovy,” Beachcomber repeats.

Cosmos giggles again, retrieving two cups from the small cabinet next to the table. “And how was your day?”

“Pretty sweet,” Beachcomber drawls, rolling over, once more facing upward. “Cosmos, your ceiling… is amazing. It’s got all these… lil’ cracks, lil’ dents, lil’ cuffs. It’s, like, y’know those organic stuff that make oxygen? Or the ones that get eroded. S’like… we’re all the same.”

Cosmos looks up from where he’s trying to crack a can open. “The same?”

“Yeah,” Beachcomber says. “With our lil’ cracks ‘n’ dents ‘n’ cuffs.”

Cosmos doesn’t know what to reply to that. Beachcomber has a way of saying things that hit Cosmos in the deepest centre of his chest, and he never knows how to react. Are words even needed, he wonders. If they were, he still isn’t sure he would be able to conjure up the right thing to say. So he just nods, solemn and moved, more to himself than to Beachcomber. Then he goes back to struggling with the cubic container. Where’s his can opener?

A soft chittering sound comes from somewhere under Beachcomber’s plating, and the mech scratches at a transformation seam under his chest plating. Cosmos decides to ignore the whole thing. He has learnt from his time with Beachcomber that there is no convincing the mech to part from his tiny organic stowaways. Instead, he retrieves the can opener from the cabinet and finally manages to peel back the canister’s cover.

“Come join me?” Cosmos asks, which is something he learnt from his time with Beachcomber too. Before Beachcomber, Cosmos would offer others things, but never work himself into the equation.

Then Beachcomber slunk into his life and started asking Cosmos to join him for things—often just lounging around in unusual places. ‘Come join me’ has sort of become their thing, Cosmos likes to think. An explicit insinuation that an activity will only be pleasurable if the other mech shares in it.

Beachcomber slowly picks himself up off the hab-suite floor. “Suuure, buddy.”

They sit at the table. Cosmos pours them both a cup with a pinch of powdered alloy. The high-octane fuel fizzles, then it settles. It’s darker than the average fuel. Cosmos leans over the cup and holds his index finger over the rim, curious. The fuel’s smell is also different, somewhat tartier but also headier. Cosmos doesn’t think he’s ever drunk it. Even during the times he recharged less than the bare minimum required for a full defrag, his systems were never strained enough to need more than his usual fuel.

He picks up his cup, lifts it at Beachcomber, and smiles. “Cheers.”

“Eyyy,” Beachcomber grins back, then gives a slight frown. “What’re you doing, buddy?”

Cosmos stops, and the proboscis extending from his index finger stops before it can dip into the fuel. “Drinking? It’s how I—you’ve seen me do this before.” Cosmos retracted the small tube, trying and failing not to squirm. “Is something wrong?”

“Nah? But, uh, drink it with your mouth? It’s _so_ much better.”

Cosmos stares for a moment. “My mouth serves as a communication system only.”

“You sure? ‘Cause I’m sure mouths are for drinking,” Beachcomber says, almost singsongs, in that tone that means he’s teasing Cosmos but only half-aware of the teasing. “Or at least for drinking high-octane fuel. Trust me, buddy. It feels _so good_. Fizzles all the way down.”

“I don’t think that’s part of my specs,” Cosmos stammers.

“Well, yeah. It’s like, y’know, when something’s too obvious, so they don’t write it in the instructions?”

“Um, I guess?”

Beachcomber smiles, slow and easy. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Cosmos says, still unconvinced.

Beachcomber just keeps on smiling. The moment stretches, and Beachcomber is so close, Cosmos starts to feel flustered. Is Beachcomber waiting for something? Is Cosmos supposed to do something? Maybe snuggle up to him, brush his bubble against Beachcomber’s chin, trail a hand up Beachcomber’s arm?

“Um.”

“Hmm?” Beachcomber prompts.

“So, um, the fuel?”

“Fuel?” Beachcomber asks, then his visor lands on the table and he looks at the cans and cups as if seeing them for the first time. “Ohhh, high-octane. Been a while since I had some. You drink it with your mouth, y’know. Super tough for shell models without one.”

He grabs his cup and gulps down half of it in one go, which is a very strange thing to witness. Beachcomber is the kind of mech to refuel so slowly that his fuel practically evaporates from sitting there for so long. High-octane fuel, however, seems to be a favourite that won’t be left waiting.

Beachcomber smiles happily down at the cup, his engine giving a happy rumble that makes the underplating passengers near it chitter and scramble around as they relocate to safer sections of his chassis. Cosmos decides to ignore this too. There’s a bigger problem he needs to solve right now—figuring out how to drink with his mouth.

In theory, he knows what to do:

  1. Raise cup to lips
  2. Press cup against lips
  3. Tilt cup toward lips
  4. Spill liquid in a controlled manner into mouth
  5. Let liquid fall to the back of the mouth
  6. Swallow liquid



In practice, however, he doesn’t even know how to get past the first stage. There’s a glass dome around his helmet, after all. _His bubble_ , as Beachcomber calls it. It’s very useful when performing his duties, but otherwise ornamental in everyday life—kibble, if you will. He’s never tried removing it. There has been no need or want. Until now, that is. Now he wants—needs?—to remove it in order to drink the high-octane fuel.

He sets the cup down as Beachcomber gulps down what’s rest of his own drink. Gently, he tries to get his bubble off. He gives a small tug, then a small twist as if to unscrew a cap, then a tug-twist. Nothing works. He tugs a bit harder, but all that does is bring him a little discomfort along the seams.

“Beachcomber?”

“Hmm?”

“I can’t remove my, um, bubble.”

“Ohhh, yeah? Hmm.” Beachcomber looks at Cosmos and cants his helmet. After a moment, he gives Cosmos a broad smile and pets his bubble. “Well, don’t worry, buddy. You look real good with it.”

“I, uh, thank you?” Cosmos squeaks. “But, I mean, the high-octane…”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t drink it?”

“Yeah? Why, though?”

Cosmos taps his bubble. “Because I can’t reach my mouth.”

“Ohhh. Yeah, that’s… a whole thing, huh? Hmmm.” Beachcomber sets his cup down and rubs his chin, then his smile comes back. “That’s okay. It just goes through.”

“Just goes through? What—what goes through?”

“The fuel. Like, your frame knows it’s food, buddy. It lets it in. Phases it right in.” Beachcomber gives Cosmos’s dome a light stroke. “Right through your bubble. You just gotta, y’know, get it in your mouth.”

“Oh.” Cosmos says. That sort of makes sense, he supposes. “But I can’t reach my mouth. Do I just splash my face with fuel? That doesn’t seem very practical.”

“Come here,” Beachcomber drawls, smiling, already grabbing Cosmos and dragging him into his lap.

Cosmos and gives a small squeak of surprise at first, his nacelles giving a little twitch, but then he lets himself be pulled closer. Beachcomber maneuvers their frames around until Cosmos is leaning back into one of Beachcomber’s arms, his side pressing against Beachcomber’s front, and his head is tilted back so Beachcomber can pour the fuel into his mouth.

Beachcomber grabs Cosmos’s cup from the table. “Okay. Ready, lil’ buddy?”

“Yes,” Cosmos says, equal parts nervous and excited.

“All right, here we gooo,” Beachcomber says, and pours the fuel into Cosmos mouth.

Or he tries to. Apart from the fact that his aim isn’t really good and he would’ve given Cosmos an optic-full of fuel rather than getting the liquid into his shyly open mouth, Cosmos’s bubble stays decidedly solid, not letting a single drop of fuel to make it into his mouth—or onto his face.

The fuel drips down Cosmos’s bubble in oily and strangely fizzly rivulets. Cosmos gives another, louder squeak when the fuel seeps through his armour.

“It tickles!” He squirms in Beachcomber’s arms, wiping at his glass dome as he tries to shrug and shudder the fuel out of his cabling and systems. It feels strange and uncomfortable, and he desperately wants a shower.

“Hey, heyy, heyyy,” Beachcomber chuckles, letting Cosmos straighten up in his lap.

Cosmos unsubspaces a rag and dabs at the seams where he felt the most fuel seep through. “It feels funny,” he complains.

Beachcomber shrugs. “You get used to it.”

Cosmos doesn’t want to get used to it, but he doesn’t say that. He cleans himself as much as he can without plenty of water and a good degreaser. Beachcomber chuckles and tries to help by pointing out areas that Cosmos might want to wipe down. It only takes a short amount of time, but by the end of it, Cosmos is giggling as Beachcomber tries to convince him that he’s got fuel on the tip of his right nacelle.

“Well,” says Cosmos at last, “the experiment we’ve conducted today has yielded some interesting if maybe expectable results: my bubble doesn’t retract, it doesn’t become immaterial for the sake of using my mouth to try to refuel, and high-octane fuel feels very odd when it gets under your plating.”

“Mmmm.” Beachcomber nuzzles Cosmos.

“So I can’t drink high-octane, I guess,” Cosmos sighs, leaning back into him.

“You can,” Beachcomber wiggles a finger. “With your tubey thing.”

“Really? But you said you can only drink high-octane with your mouth.”

“Hmmm, yeah, but that’s, like, something you do if you, like, want to really experience the full flavour and stuff of the thing in a conventional way, y’know?” Beachcomber shrugs, reaching past Cosmos to fill their cups again. “You can still enjoy it your own way.”

“Oh,” Cosmos says, and then accepts his cup with a smile. “I’d like that.”

They drink in silence, or in as much silence as they can be with the constant chittering and skittering from different parts of Beachcomber’s chassis. Cosmos looks out the window and calculates where the stars and celestial bodies that Iacon’s light pollution hides are.

“The view’s nice too,” says Beachcomber, apropos of nothing, and gestures out the tall window.

“Bit distant,” Cosmos says; he always thinks it.

He isn’t an expert in real estate, but he knows that when he got his hab-suite, a nice view wasn’t one of its strong points. Anything important is too far away to bring awe—the Metroplex, Fortress Maximus, the Nexus. The only one that can be better appreciated is the Metroplex, and even it, sprawling structure that it is, isn’t exactly close. Nice views aren’t distant.

Beachcomber gave a thoughtful hum. “Y’know, lil’ buddy, sometimes, you gotta take a step back to take in the whole thing. Y’know, like, you gotta find the protoplanetary disk to find the planets, right?” He held his arms out and then made a gesture as if zooming into something. “Baby steps.”

“Baby steps?”

“Ha, yeah.”

“No, I mean, what’s that?”

Beachcomber starts rubbing circles on the flat top of Cosmos’s bubble. “What’s what, buddy?”

“A baby?”

“Hmmm, a lil’ organic protoform. Why?”

Cosmos smiles and shakes his head. “Because you said baby steps are needed to appreciate the whole thing.”

“Ohhh. Yeah, that’s right. Baby steps, but, like, in reverse, y’know?”

Cosmos thinks about how he had to be surrounded by people to feel lonely, and how he needs to be with only one mech to feel accompanied. In reverse indeed.

He dips his finger into his cup, smiling all the while. “I know.”


End file.
